I’ve been trying to fit this thought into 140 characters in order to post it on Twitter, however even though this is intended to be brief, I simply need more than 140 characters.
Recently, I’ve shared a big dream with a number of people and I’m interested in the most common response which is ‘Wow, that’s a big dream‘ accompanied by a slightly skeptical expression. I used to take this more personally, as if somehow this was a reflection on me personally. Obviously these people thought I was being fantastical, ‘a dreamer’, incapable of making it happen.
But recently, I re-read a book called Synchronicity which talks about the power in creating something for its own sake, not for yours and I’ve realised that this is exactly how I feel about this dream I’ve had for so many years. I want this to happen not so much for my sake (although of course I’d love to be involved and that’s a key point because in order for this dream to manifest it will require collaboration) but for its sake. I want to see it come to life.
Understanding my relationship with this dream has consequently shifted the nature of my attachment to it. I feel like I’ve become an advocate for ‘it’, rather than ‘my’ project. So that when I hear people say ‘Wow, that’s a really big dream’ and look skeptical, I’m interested. As kids, we dreamed BIG dreams. We were allowed to dream big dreams, encouraged to. But as adults, somehow that’s silly. Not always, but in my experience, it usually is.
Why?
I’m interested in your experience, your thoughts…
Thank you Eli! For your comment and for sharing Havi’s post on ‘a tiny sweet thing’. What wise words. They remind me, in a way, of Hiro Boga’s (http://hiroboga.com/) and her belief that every creation has a spiritual counterpart, a deva which holds all the wisdom and
knowledge to allow the perfect unfolding of that creation.
I look forward to hearing about the dreams, for whom you are an advocate, in days to come.
Let’s see if we can find a time, before too many more months roll by, to sit and explore our big and significant dreams. Love to you both. xx
Hi Tink, what a beautiful post!
Sharing dreams is scary. One idea that’s helped me with this is treating my dream in its beginnings like a tiny, sweet, thing, as Havi Brooks writes about here:
http://www.fluentself.com/blog/stuckification/a-tiny-sweet-thing/
Treating it a bit like a newborn thing, wrapping it in softness and fondess, showing it to those who will be quiet and excited and loving, keeping it in a safe space until it’s strong enough to be around everyone and tall and strong. This has helped me a lot.
I love, I love your post as a guide on what comes next. I like the idea of being an advocate for a dream – as in, this thing exists, it deserves to exist, it should exist, and I’m here guiding and supporting and it.
And your loving curiosity with the dream, with your own and other people’s relationship to it.
Thank you, thank you Tink!
What a delicious dream conversation – I’m just so grateful to be able to connect with both of you (although it also feels like far too long since I sat with you lovely Stephanie) and to explore our big & significant dreams together.
Ahhh, lovely S, you have inadvertently (or maybe it wasn’t inadvertent at all, thank you Carl) woven threads together for me. Because the ‘big dream’ I talk of here, is the big dream of the 3 storied building, not the big dream of the compost and the miniature ark. But they are of course, intimately linked.
How grateful I am for your presence in my life, your connection to the dreamscape, your storyteaching and wordweaving.
I will keep writing my dreams down. Last night I dreamt of a Willy Wonkerish tube of taste, out of which came paste attuned to the taste and nutritional need of each person. Quite magical and relevant to the lovely Nicola Cranfield’s talk at Urban Harvest last night
on food, well-being and becoming attuned to our own self.
Talk soon? It feels like it’s been ages.
love,
Tink
You know I believe in big dreams – I call them ‘significant dreams’. By this I mean that I know that these dreams come from a deep and shared archetypal place that Carl Jung called the Collective Unconscious. Our personal subconscious is threaded into this, very much like the Na’vi were threaded by the bond into their Great Mother Tree. Now people might be looking skeptically at the example I’ve just used. But dreams, like great novels, poems, art and movies all draw deeply on the collective unconscious, whose language is symbol and whose narrative structure is myth.
So, the imminent danger of the wasps in the compost can be seen as the imminent self-created destruction of our ‘earth’ which you as the dreamer feel as close as in your back yard.
In the dream you overcome your fear and approach the heap. But this covered buzzing earth is magical, too. It’s the rubbish out of which we can renew ourselves and the planet. Our waste is actually our compost, if we choose to see it like this. Our imminent danger our moment of renewal. How. The rubbish is richly and darkly humus, the danger actually veiling something beautiful and regenerative. But all in miniature still. All still forming under the surface of our scared and scarred world.
Your animals emerging one by one are deeply significant. This new ark is our waste-laden earth. It carries you and us to the possibility of a new ‘dove-found’ peace and prosperity her on earth. And these new species are emerging to repopulate our world, if we could only see this moment of crisis as our biggest and most wonder-filled opportunity.
Tink you have this dream for all of us. You have tapped into our collective fears and our deepest wishes for renewal.
To the skeptics simply answer that dreaming a new dream is essential to our survival. Each of us taking our part to realise that dream is the only way we turn the wasps of our destructive impulses and behaviours into the butterflies of our regeneration.
With love, and channelling Carl (another skeptical look may be thrown my way here, too)
Stephanie
p.s. keep dreaming, writing down and doing something about your dreams, Tink. They are how humanity has always recreated itself – by reimagining our waking lives in the dark theatre of our dreams.